One of my clients broke some exciting news to me the other day. She had discovered Excel’s pivot table feature. She was just amazed how quickly she could pull together answers to questions her yard man had regarding the number of days their equipment was in the field. Her mind was exploding with the different job costing, pricing, and financial analyses she would be able to perform. I assured her that her company’s bottom line would benefit greatly from her new hobby.

If you don’t know and use Excel, learn it. There is no more valuable tool for running a business than Excel. It is essential for job cost analysis, pricing analysis, production trending, and financial analysis. It is great for budgeting. It works pretty well for scheduling.

If you rely on your accounting system’s reports for these tasks you are making a mistake. Accounting systems simply can’t manage and slice and dice data like Excel.

The two most useful features of Excel are graphs and pivot tables. Until you see what pivot tables can do you don’t know what you’re missing. Take a few minutes, hop onto www.YouTube.com and search for Excel Pivot Tables.  Watch a handful of video samples. You’ll be amazed at the things it can do for you.

Do yourself a BIG favor. Learn how to use Excel.  You can thank me later.

It’s not to late to attend Pavement Live. This new concept for asphalt maintenance and paving contractors includes 10 live demonstrations, conferences and an exhibit hall with the latest equipment. I am proud to be delivering five presentations starting on Wednesday thru Saturday. Their will be an array of industry experts conducting many different classes.

I will be teaching the following classes at this year’s event:

Wednesday, November 30  9:00am – Noon

W4 Developing a Hands-on Strategic Plan for Pavement Maintenance Contractors

Wednesday, November 30  3:00pm – 4:30pm

A5 Repeat Sales: The Secret to Long-term Success

Thursday, December 1   8:00am – 9:30am

B10 Increasing Efficiency in the Field

Thursday, December 1  10:00am – 11:30am

B14 Profitable Pavement Maintenance Job Costing

Saturday, December 3   8:00am – 9:30am

D25 Gotcha! Attitude is Everything in Sales

Complete details are available at www.PavementLIVE.com or by calling 800-827-8009. I’m looking forward to seeing you!

I look forward to seeing you there!

Guy

Guy and I receive dozens of emails weekly from people wanting us to blog about their products and services. Most are a complete misfit for our readership. Every now and then one arrives that is relevant information for contractors. Such is the case today. Follow the link below to a blog post on another site that lists 30 construction related apps for iPhones and iPads. Some are kind of lame. Many are potential times savers.

Click Here

http://www.constructionmanagementdegree.com/30-incredible-iphone-and-ipad-apps-for-contractors-and-home-renovators/

I just could not wait any longer. Ignore the stitches in my nose. (you can hardly see them)

I have been coaching clients who seem desperate and want to go back to chasing every lead that comes in. It is obvious that this is a huge mistake for most of you. So in conjunction with our recent Time Management Blog we strongly encourage you to listen to our latest video blog Stop Chasing Your Tail.

You have learned most of what you need to do already. Now is the time to practice those skills. Watch our Spring training video to help you get back those skills that may be a little rusty!

I’ve told dozens of people about this amazing presentation Frank Kern delivered a few years ago at Rich Schefren’s Business Acceleration Program work shop. I originally got access to it through one of Schefren’s DVDs and later through an online service offered by Frank.

Being a master of technology, Frank made it nearly impossible to copy and share with others. I’m not even sure Guy has seen it.

The presentation is a real eye opener. Frank calls it “Core Influence” but it really should be titled “Your Perfect Groundhog Day”. Frank leads the viewer through an exercise that helped him finally understand what he truly valued and enjoyed in life. It’s a fun little exercise that grows more and more difficult and valuable the more thought you put into it.

Frank’s exercise is perfect for every business owner who isn’t sure what his or her long term goal is. What life he or she is striving to build. What the end of the journey would ideally look like.

Frank has never before made this presentation available before outside of the one package I was involved with. He is now sharing it with the world. All it takes from you is an active email address and about 60 minutes of your time.

To watch the video, click on the link below. You don’t want to miss this. Frank is always good for dozens of laughs and he is at his most entertaining and most thought provoking in his Core Influence video.

Click here to watch the video.

You can thank me later.

Have a great night (day, afternoon, whatever).

Ron

Had lunch today with a couple of pipe fitters.

Good food. Good conversation.

I find that field guys often have really insightful perspectives about business and life. Anyway…

During the conversation each threw out a saying that they had heard recently. One from his minister and the other during a visitation. I thought you might reading enjoy them.

From Danny:

“Following the path of least resistance makes rivers and men run crooked.”

From Ray:

“Uphold your name. Every morning, your goal should be to better your name. Everything you do throughout the day should better your name. In the end, people remember your name.”

Thank you Danny and Ray for the sage advice.

Best of luck with your business.

Ron & Guy

Been a little under the weather and swamped with writing assignments but just got inspired to share something with you. Hopefully, you will find it thought provoking and worth your time.

I just finished with the second module of a coaching program I’m taking – yes, even coaches need to keep learning. The module stressed the importance of knowing your strengths and building your business around them.

Each of us has unique strengths. Characteristics that set us apart. Talents that allow us to do certain things naturally, almost without effort. Few of us really know what our strengths are. Do you know yours? You need to.

That knowledge plays into your business’ evolution.  Give me a few minutes to explain how my strengths play into my business’ future, and I think you’ll gain a clearer understanding of why you need to know your strengths.

I think my strengths are the ability to solve complex problems and the ability to figure out the motives of people. Solutions just pop into my head. I kid you not.

I could tell myself that my engineering training taught me how to solve problems systematically but that wouldn’t be the truth. I’ve always had the ability to understand the dynamics that affect outcomes and come up with approaches that produce the best possible results. This is especially true if people are involved in the problem.

It’s one of the reasons I enjoy helping contractors with their businesses. Few things in life are more complex than running a business and all businesses revolve around people. Helping owners figure out how to solve their pressing business and people problems fall right into my two strengths.

Here’s how this knowledge about myself affects my business.

I am committed to building a business that provides every type of assistance that a contractor might need. Since my strengths are in and of themselves insufficient to do that, I must recruit a team of individuals who possess the strengths I’m missing – the strengths that my business can not achieve it’s goal without.

In all honesty, what I am trying to do with my service is something few most coaches and consultants are willing to do. And one of the reasons is it takes a team of talented people to pull it off..

That’s the message I’m trying to get across to you – and I am probably doing a lousy job of it tonight.

If you are going to build a successful business – one that you can get away from, one that provides you with financial freedom – you must identify your strengths and use a team to fill in around them.

You should be positioned to concentrate your time on what you do best and have your team cover everything else.

Of course the first pressing question is “What are your strengths?”

How about a few tips on how to discover them?

1. Take a Kolbe A Index from www.kolbe.com ($50 +/-)

2. Take some form of DISC or Myers-Briggs communication profile.

3. Identify the tasks that you enjoy doing the most. These are probably tasks you mastered very quickly. That you can perform almost without effort.

4. Ask friends and family what they believe your three greatest strengths are.

By the way, it’s equally important to know what you’re not so good at.

I hate performing the same procedure over and over. I’m horrible at it. It bores me. So, when faced with a task that must be performed repeatedly, I have three options: find someone to do it for me, come up with a technological solution that is quick and painless, or find a way to make a game out of it. In the long run, I will always do better having someone else do it for me. As will you for your weaknesses.

One final piece of advice. Strengthen your strengths and work around your weaknesses. Trying to strengthen a weakness is a huge waste of time. You will never do the task better than someone for whom the task comes naturally.

Next topic: safety and what we do that undermines it.